Property Sale Anticipated 'Soon' For Toms River Schools

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Toms River Regional School District officials anticipate making an announcement by the end of January on the sale of district property to close a $12.4 million budget gap.

Superintendent Michael Citta said the district has "multiple things in process" in response to a question about the status of the property sales at the Board of Education meeting Wednesday night.

"By the end of this month it should come to a conclusion," Citta told Krista Whittaker, a South Toms River resident and parent of a district student. "There will be an announcement of some sort that should complete those transactions but it's in the middle of negotiations right now."

The district has been forced to sell pieces of property to close the gap in the 2024-25 budget that was left the state Department of Education declined to provide any further assistance to Toms River Regional in what was supposed to be the final year of the S2 state aid cuts.

State legislators passed a bill last June allowing districts that are under adequacy and faced with large gaps between revenue and expenses to increase the district's property tax levy by 9.9 percent. The Toms River Regional board agreed to approve that increase only if the state provided the remaining $12.4 million needed to close the gap, and rejected the final budget in early July because the state declined to provide it.

State education officials enacted the tentative Toms River schools budget in July after the board refused to approve the final budget, forcing the district to sell properties.

Without an infusion of cash from the property sales, Toms River Regional will not have enough money to pay its staff past April, Citta said in May 2024.

Toms River Regional filed a lawsuit against the state in October over the aid cuts, in the process detailing the impact of what has become a structural deficit in its budget as a result of the S2 cuts and the state's 2 percent cap on increases in the property tax levy. Read more: Falling Test Scores, Rising Absenteeism: Suit Details Aid Cuts Toll On Toms River Schools

The properties that could be sold include the administrative offices at 1144 Hooper Ave., the district's maintenance yard at 123 Walnut St., and the district's transportation facility on Route 37— where its school buses are stored at night and where its mechanics work — along with pieces of land next to Joseph A. Citta Elementary, next to Toms River High School East, and next to East Dover Elementary.

Those asset sales, however, are one-time revenue injections and the district would start the next budget cycle with a deficit — which is part of why the district is suing the state now. Though S2 was supposed to end with the 2024-25 budget year, state legislators have made no efforts to make adjustments, meaning Toms River Regional could very well face another reduction in aid based on the education department's local fair share calculations.

One of the provisions of S2 was that the state was supposed to review the implementation of the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, which was supposed to ensure all districts had "the essential resources needed" to provide students a thorough-and-efficient education, a requirement under New Jersey's constitution.

S2, as originally billed, was supposed to eliminate the adjustment aid provided to districts when the state rolled out the School Funding Reform Act of 2008. Toms River Regional's adjustment aid reduction, according to figures released in 2017 by the state Office of Legislative Services, was supposed to be $18,572,932. Calculated over seven years, that cumulative reduction in aid would have been about $130 million. Read more: School Aid Fight: Toms River To Lose $18M Under Sweeney Plan

The lawsuit says Toms River's aid cut over the seven years of S2 has been more than $40 million, from $68.3 million in 2017-18 to $28.1 million in 2024-25. While early arguments regarding the aid cuts under S2 centered on a decline in student enrollment, Toms River Regional's lawsuit notes that the district has seen significant increases in student populations needing more support in the classroom, including both academic and medical supports that are required under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.